FONTANA - Disappointing.

Not Sunday’s Auto Club 500 - boring until the last 20 laps - but the size of the crowd at California Speedway.

At an estimated 80,000 - the best educated guess since track owner International Speedway Corp. will not release attendance figures - the gathering was the smallest for NASCAR’s premier series at Fontana since the expansion of the grandstands to 93,000 in 1997 and 2000.

So much for all that talk of the speedway being the fourth-biggest city in San Bernardino County, a Jay Lucas-inspired theme so long ago. Maybe a city that size would have attracted bigger Hollywood celebrities than the ones who showed up Sunday.

As it was, this scaled-down town was graced by the presence of, hold your breath, Hilary Duff, Jewel, David Boreanaz, Geoff Stultz, Nick "minus Jessica" Lachey, Rob Dibble and some guy from "24," but not the one that saved Ontario airport in the season opener.

Blame it on a generation gap, Las Vegas, ticket prices, cool weather or anything else detractors might think of.

And it just wasn’t on Sunday, but all three days.

Perhaps the best line of the weekend came from an Eastern-based writer before the Craftsman Truck Series race Friday night: "Maybe they should introduce the crowd to the drivers."

The best race of that night was trying to get to the I-15/I-215 merge before it slowed to a crawl in the Fontana-Rancho Cucamonga corridor.

Traffic wasn’t a major issue on Sunday. So much for the expected 30,000 cars and the mo’ better parking plan.

No doubt the NASCAR die-hards in the Southeast spent Sunday yelling at the Fox telecast. Not about Jack Roush’s domination, but how ungrateful Southern California fans are to have two Nextel Cup races and not support them. One Ohio reader e-mailed to say Bristol Motor Speedway could easily sell another 185,000 seats if they moved the race to the Tennessee track.

Well, there’s a tradeoff of sorts. They don’t go 200 mph in Bristol, but there’s more contact on the parade lap than there was at Fontana on Sunday.

In the years this race was in late April or late May, it generally sold out. But when NASCAR opted to award Fontana a second date in 2003, it started the chain of events that resulted in Sunday’s small crowd.

First, there was that nasty business of having three Cup races at Fontana in nine months. Then there’s Las Vegas, an established race in March two weeks following Fontana. Had that race also been moved, Advertisement none of the current problems would exist.

Nobody can underestimate the impact the Las Vegas race has on Fontana. Certainly not Bruton Smith, who has said he’s going to spend $300 million to improve not only the track at Las Vegas, but also the fan experience.

In the fall, Fontana fans will be able to buy high-priced Wolfgang Puck food. That will send ’em flocking to the box office.

That you can pin on the track management. What you can’t do is blame them for the boring racing. That’s a direct result of the relatively flat track that places a premium on horsepower.

Roger Penske thought by reducing the banking at Fontana that he would create more side-by-side racing than at Michigan International Speedway. The tracks, minus the banking, are virtual twins, but the consistently close racing has never materialized at Fontana.

Could that be the reason the fans stay away from Fontana? Rather doubt it.

For the most part, today’s SoCal NASCAR fan is new to all this. The grandfather of today’s fan attended races at Riverside and Ontario, and brought along his sons. Those sons caught the tail end of NASCAR in the region in 1986 before Penske opened the speedway in 1997.

The latest generations know NASCAR only from what they’ve seen on television. And we all know how hard it is to move from the flat-screen.

It’s going to take time, and closer racing, to rebuild the date. There’s no such trouble with the Labor Day Sunday night race, which almost determines the field for the Chase and is on a holiday. If in five years the speedway has not made the necessary headway in building its attendance for the Auto Club race, NASCAR needs to take a closer look at its schedule.

I’ll take the bet. In five years, this will be looked back on as the foundation of another sellout.